Activist Clowns in Porto, Portugal. Photo Fábio Silva
Imagining Utopian Futures with Clown Logic
It can be hard to imagine a positive future. Some say the climate crisis is a crisis of the imagination. But could the clown offer tools for creating new and compelling narratives of the future? Using clown logic can help us to think differently about problems, reveal hidden solutions and dare us to dream of systematic change.
I use the ‘yes and…’ storytelling game. In pairs one person begins: ‘Let’s go to the beach.’ The other says, ‘Yes, we’ll go to the beach and we’ll buy ice-cream’. ‘Yes, we’ll buy ice-cream and we’ll feed it to the seagulls’, etc. It is important that the story develops on the idea suggested before. I also encourage participants to stand up and get their whole body involved in the storytelling. This exercise builds complicity and with the affirmation of your partner can develop in wild and absurd ways. I have also used this exercise to bring clown imagination to action design. So we begin, ‘Let’s go to the protest’, ‘Yes, we’ll go to the protest and pretend to be police’, ‘Yes, we’ll pretend to be police and apologise to all the protesters for being so mean’, etc. Once the exercise is over, I ask participants to recall their favourite parts of the action. In there are potentially magical ideas that would never have been conceived with our logic. Somewhere in there, those utopian solutions might also exist. Or at least in our imagination these beautiful, new worlds are possible.
I use the ‘yes and…’ storytelling game. In pairs one person begins: ‘Let’s go to the beach.’ The other says, ‘Yes, we’ll go to the beach and we’ll buy ice-cream’. ‘Yes, we’ll buy ice-cream and we’ll feed it to the seagulls’, etc. It is important that the story develops on the idea suggested before. I also encourage participants to stand up and get their whole body involved in the storytelling. This exercise builds complicity and with the affirmation of your partner can develop in wild and absurd ways. I have also used this exercise to bring clown imagination to action design. So we begin, ‘Let’s go to the protest’, ‘Yes, we’ll go to the protest and pretend to be police’, ‘Yes, we’ll pretend to be police and apologise to all the protesters for being so mean’, etc. Once the exercise is over, I ask participants to recall their favourite parts of the action. In there are potentially magical ideas that would never have been conceived with our logic. Somewhere in there, those utopian solutions might also exist. Or at least in our imagination these beautiful, new worlds are possible.
Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy Berlin. Photos by Jason Krüger
